Before
that “farm to cone” product hit the streets, ice cream wasn’t trendy.
Gelato, maybe, for people into futbol and Vespas. But, in 2011, longtime
marketing pro Kim Malek and her young cousin turned their Northeast
Alberta Street shop into the new Voodoo Doughnut—but for out-of-towners
wearing yoga pants instead of sweatpants and Raiders jerseys. The Maleks
have three Portland shops with long lines for a scoop of pear and blue
cheese, a massive industrial commissary kitchen off Southeast 7th
Avenue, and plans to open in Los Angeles this month.

It’s a
once-in-a-decade success, and arguably the defining moment when
Portland’s brand transitioned from “weird” to “artisanalesque.”

Has
the success of Salt & Straw sparked a local ice-cream renaissance,
as happened when Stumptown Coffee Roasters made Portland into a top-tier
coffee town? We wanted to find out, so we set out to visit the newer
scooperies in town. We found a few interesting new places, some with
out-of-left-field flavors of ice cream, others with organic,
artisanalesque froyo. MARTIN CIZMAR.

A kombucha-sipping distant cousin of Salt
& Straw, this new shop on Broadway is going for a health-conscious
demographic and locavores. Eb & Bean is serious about the farm
thing, buying its milk at family-run organic dairy farms within 100
miles of Portland. No hormones, no artificial sweeteners, no corn syrup.
The look is contemporary modern: Flavors are listed on a big
chalkboard, and a polar bear in stocking hat serves as mascot. You don’t
pay by weight, as at most froyo joints. Instead, build yourself a
sundae ($3.75 small, $4.75 large) by picking a yogurt in fairly standard
flavors like vanilla, chocolate, raspberry or coffee, then choosing
toppings ($1 each, or unlimited for $1.75) from a long list that
includes local honey, gummy bears and orange cardamom caramel corn. The
only problem is the froyo, which lacks the flavor punch we’ve been
conditioned to expect in a dessert. Everything we tried was surprisingly
tepid in flavor, but we’d definitely try more. MARTIN CIZMAR.

Mix ’n’ Match is exactly like Bill Nye,
except you can taste the science. The little shop—which first opened as a
cart across from the Old Town Voodoo last summer, and as a Milwaukie
creamery just this spring—uses liquid nitrogen to insta-freeze its
cream, which means flavors are limited only by your imagination and the
shop’s stock of syrups and mixers. You want habanero ice cream with
bacon? No problem. It’ll be just a sec, plus $4, $6 or $7 for one to
three scoops. You want cheesecake-flavored ice cream with tart
raspberries fresh from the Oregon fields? They’ll freeze that right up
for you in a metal mixing bowl that brims with heavy vapor, as children
peer gape-mouthed. Extra flavors are 50 cents, extra mixers 50 cents,
which frees you to make your own terrible mistakes: French vanilla-grape
Kahlua with mixed-in Sour Patch Kids, Twix and cashews. Worse things.
Awful things. They don’t care. With science, everything is possible, and
some of it is terrifying to behold. For 50 cents, they’ll even pack
your ice cream with some extra nitrogen so you can drive it 20 minutes
home in a car in 90-degree heat with no air conditioning and still have
unmelted ice cream. Because science is magic. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Only a few blocks from Salt & Straw, you’d expect this
cart-turned-shop to get some overflow traffic. Not really—people who
want the Salt want it enough to wait as long as they need to. Fifty’s
scoops are handmade, and thus with limited but well-designed flavors.
The Toasted Milk recalls the leftover milk from a bowl of Cinnamon Toast
Crunch, while the Grapefruit Rosewater sorbet tastes like an iced and
creamy version of the fruit. A bite of their Bourbon Cherry is indeed a
lot like a shot of whiskey. Ask for bee pollen sprinkled over your cone
of Blood Orange Creamsicle—or just combine drinks and dessert with a
sorbet cocktail. KATHERINE MARRONE.

Froyo shops can get pretty generic pretty
fast. Most seem to have the same fruity flavors, with the same crushed
Oreos and peanut butter cups scattering the countertops. Fortunately,
Twist Frozen Yogurt & Coffee Bar takes it up a notch: Instead of
just yogurt, it also offers coffee from local Ristretto Roasters and
gluten-free, vegan pastries from Portland’s Petunia’s Pies and Pastries.
It’s cozy, too, with couches, a fireplace and Scrabble. Twist
also offers what it calls “healthy” smoothies—though the “Super Green”
(made with tart yogurt, fruit and spinach) didn’t taste as “green” as
advertised. All in all, if you find yourself with a hankering for a cup
of your standard froyo and an espresso, this is a nice place. KATHERINE
MARRONE.

Blackberry is something of a throwback to
old, weird Portland. Not in any calculated way, but just because this
“yogurt lounge” definitely looks (and, oddly, smells) more like a hookah
bar near a college campus, or the set of a late ’90s Dandy Warhols
video, with dark walls, trippy faux-classic
paintings and translucent red plastic chairs. There is also, oddly, one
of those gaudy YOGURT banners you see out in Gresham fluttering on
lower East Burnside. The froyo, though, is quite like other froyo.
MARTIN CIZMAR.